Sofitel Gatwickby Andrew McCallum Crawford

Genre:DramaSwearwords: None.Description:It wasn't supposed to happen like this._____________________________________________________________________He pulls back the curtain. It is a room with a view. Lights are stacked in the sky. He watches them descend slowly till he can make out the wings and the wheels. The silence has him wondering. He puts a hand to the glass. A slight vibration. Periodic, after each aeroplane disappears behind the terminal.He imagines the sound of tapping.He lets the curtain fall.There it is again. Tapping, but more urgent this time; knocking. He tells himself it is a dream, but when he opens the door she is there, in a bright yellow ski jacket zipped up to her chin. Her eyes meet his then flick down to his shoulders, his legs, his shoulders again, his feet, his neck. Anywhere but his face. Her expression. Her lack of expression, as if she doesn’t like what she sees, as if she’d been expecting something better.‘Hello,’ he says.She brushes past on a current of perfume. It hadn’t occurred to him that she might come here. Not here. Not now, not like this. He had been hoping for something later, though. He had been hoping so much it was driving himSlow down. You can control this. But these thoughts have a lifeShe is standing in the space between the dressing table and the bed, looking for somewhere to sit. There is no need to sit down yet. He embraces her, but it is not supposed to be like this, embracing her ski jacket, embracing Gore-Tex and Velcro. It is her he wants to embrace, the essence of her. The smell of her perfume, but it is not her perfumeHer mouth is so close. He places his lips on her cheek. She accepts the kiss rigidly. He pulls away and looks at her. ‘I wasn’t…’ he says.‘No,’ she says. Her mouth. The warmth of her breath carries the scent of almonds. For a moment everything is clear, and he is happy. The moment doesn’t last. He looks at her, intently, as if he is trying to recognise a face he has never seen. He wants to get to the point, but something is stopping him. The point isn’t sex. He hopes she doesn’t think it is. The point is what is on his mind. But what is on her mind? Who is he to presume? They are strangers.‘I’m glad you came,’ he says.She sits on the edge of the bed. There is a puff of air from her collar as she adjusts her hands in her lap.‘Take your jacket off,’ he says. ‘You must be stifling.’‘I can’t stay long,’ she says. ‘Michael is waiting for me in the car.’Something drains from him. It isn’t air. It feels like blood, or life. ‘You told Michael?’ ‘Of course I did,’ she says. She hesitates. ‘But I didn’t tell him it was…it took ages to get here. We got lost somewhere.’‘So stay a while,’ he says. ‘Tell Michael to…’ He takes a deep breath. ‘I’d like to meet him.’ He is lying. Michael would not be welcome here. Not between the two of them. But Michael has more right toAlone in this rented room, his thoughts are of who owns whom.‘How long have we…I got?’ he says.She pulls back an elasticated cuff. There is another sound, the opposite of the first one, from her collar. ‘About twenty minutes,’ she says.‘We can’t…I have so much I need to tell you,’ he says. ‘If there’s a time limit…’‘Don’t get angry,’ she says. ‘Be grateful.’ She has been in the room for a matter of seconds and already the situation has turned to dust. She looks at the dressing table. The detritus of a cold meal. ‘Did you enjoy your dinner?’ she says.‘Is this what we’ve come to?’ he says. ‘I’ll give it three out of ten.’ He knows he has no right to speak to her like this, not like this. He wants to speak to her like they are old friends glad to see each other, not like old lovers who turned into enemies for a while and are still enemies. They are not enemies. How could they be? He thought he had moved on. He has, but it is all coming back. It has been coming back for a while, but this room is doing something to him. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. He wanted to see her, of course he did, but why is she doing this, why is she provoking him?In mitigation, she is doing nothing he isn’t making her do.She is like a puppet.She is a puppet.‘Take your jacket off for God’s sake,’ he says.She stands up. ‘Don’t tell me what to do,’ she says. ‘You don’t own me.’‘I know that,’ he says. ‘There’s no need…’‘I’m not your wife.’Why is he making her say these things?‘Where is she?’ she says. ‘Why didn’t you bring her with you?’‘I explained to you…’ he says.‘Yes, you explained,’ she says. ‘And I believed you.’‘It was the truth,’ he says.‘You know what your problem is?’ she says.He covers his ears, but her voice is clear, booming. Her voice is inside his head.‘You don’t know how to treat people,’ she says. ‘All you do is use them.’He runs his fingernails down his face. He feels the skin tearing. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I know.’She moves away from him, to the window. The curtain. The view. She studies it. Her mouth moves as if she is counting. Counting the aeroplanes. ‘Aren’t there any taking off?’ she says.He is at her side. Something disappears behind the terminal. ‘You can’t see them from here,’ he says.‘It’s sad,’ she says. ‘All those people coming back from somewhere.’‘Maybe they’re tourists,’ he says. ‘People arriving somewhere. People at the start of something. Or on the verge of something. People like me.’He lays both palms on the glass. He feels the vibration. Landing lights. Wings. Wheels. People arriving. Strangers. People he will never know. People he will never see. People he doesn’t care about. He adjusts his eyes till he sees the room over his shoulder. Everything is distorted; it is a reflection. It is a version of something, and this version doesn’t exist, not really. It isn’t something you could climb into, like a dream. He tries to think of the people on the aeroplanes. People who only exist in his mind.The room is so empty.He is alone, and he is afraid. This is the reality. This is the point. He is trying to imagine things that are good, but he cannot escape these thoughts that tell him he is doing something bad. Bad thoughts, and the thoughts are bad because he is bad. He is a bad person. He is a criminal about to be found out when all he wants is the freedom to imagine what he will, the freedom to imagine he isn’t owned, the freedom to imagine a woman.

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About the Author

Andrew McCallum Crawford grew up in Grangemouth, an industrial town in East Central Scotland. He studied Science and Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and went on to take a teaching qualification at Jordanhill College, Glasgow. His poetry and short fiction have appeared in Lines Review, The Athens News, Junk Junction, Ink Sweat and Tears, McStorytellers, Weaponizer, New Linear Perspectives, Spilling Ink Review, Drey 2 (Red Squirrel Press), The Legendary, the Midwest Literary Magazine and the The. His first novel, Drive!, was published in 2010. His collection of short fiction, The Next Stop Is Croy and other stories, was released in October 2011. He lives in Greece.His blog can be found at http://www.andrewmccallumcrawford.blogspot.com/ and his novel can be purchased at this link on Amazon.co.uk.